Iranian Troops Open 2nd Front Against Iraq

The Iranian army launched a three-pronged assault on Iraqi forces 70 miles northeast of Baghdad early Wednesday, opening a second front in the six-year-old Persian Gulf War.

Iran’s official Islamic Republic News Agency said that Iranian forces recaptured 14 strategic hills from Iraqi troops in the new offensive, but Iraq said it repulsed the assault and inflicted “immense losses” on the Iranians.

With heavy fighting still raging in the south near the Iraqi port of Basra, the opening of a central front close to the Iraqi capital led to an immediate flurry of speculation that Iran’s long-threatened “final offensive” had finally begun.

However, after a hectic day of guessing and assessing the war communiques of both sides, the consensus of most Western diplomats and military experts in Baghdad was that this was not the start of Iran’s all-out effort to win the war--although some speculated that it might be part of a buildup toward the final push. In Washington, a Reagan Administration official termed the Iranian assault a failure.

‘Limited Offensive’

The diplomats here noted that Iranian war communiques characterized the attack as a “limited offensive,” and they added that their own information indicated that the Iranians have not yet committed the bulk of their forces along the central front.

“The Iranians still have an estimated 1,000 tanks on their side of the central front that have not been used yet,” one Western military expert said. “Until we see them come over the border, I don’t think we can say that the final offensive has begun.”

The latest attack--code-named Karbala 6, after an Iraqi site venerated by those of the Shia Muslim faith--was mounted by regular Iranian army troops near the Iranian border town of Sumar. It came six days after Iranian paramilitary Revolutionary Guards launched the Karbala 5 offensive near the southern Iraqi port of Basra.

During Wednesday’s assault, the Iranian news agency said, the attackers wrested back 38 square miles of Iranian territory held by Iraq since early in the war, including the oil town of Naft-e Shah. Iraq invaded Iran in September, 1980, and is believed to still hold isolated chunks of Iranian territory.

Fighting Dies Down

Late Wednesday, Iraqi war communiques said that the fighting, which began overnight, had died down by the afternoon, after the last of three Iranian thrusts had been repelled.

In Washington, the Administration official said U.S. intelligence reports indicated that the Iranian attack has ended in failure.

“It’s already over,” the official said. “It wasn’t even a one-day wonder; it was a half-day wonder.”

He said there was no sign that the Iranians had brought up to the central front the kind of reinforcements necessary to stage a full-scale drive toward Baghdad.

On the southern front, the official said, Iraq has halted the Iranian troops driving on Basra.

“The Iraqis seem to be doing fine and gradually pushing the Iranians out,” he said.

3 Positions Attacked

In the latest assault, the Iranian army attacked three checkpoint positions of the Iraqi army’s 2nd Corps near the Iraqi border town of Mandali, some 70 miles northeast of Baghdad, Iraqi officials said.

Two of the attacks were quickly repelled, while the Iranians overran the third checkpoint, the officials said. However, that checkpoint was recaptured later in the day, they added, and all the invading troops were either killed or captured or pushed back to their side of the 733-mile long frontier.

Western military experts in Baghdad said that in trying to regain those strategic hilltop positions occupied by the Iraqis since the start of the war, the Iranians might be trying to set the stage for their final offensive.

But other officials said they thought the attack on the central front could also be an attempt to relieve pressure in the south, where the Revolutionary Guard forces pushed across the border six days ago. Since then, they have been reported cut off and under attack by Iraqi planes and artillery just six miles east of Basra, Iraq’s second-largest city.

Fighting at Fish Lake

An Iraqi war communique indicated that heavy fighting was continuing around the southeastern end of the man-made Fish Lake, about three miles inside Iraq. “This morning the enemy tried to recapture its footholds southeast of Fish Lake but was driven back by our artillery, armor and infantry units, sustaining enormous losses,” the communique said.

At the start of their southern offensive last Thursday night, the Iranians crossed a large water barrier behind the canal-shaped lake, seizing a small island and several positions around both the barrier and the lake. The Iraqis later said they had recaptured most of the positions, but they so far seem to have failed to completedly dislodge the Iranians, who have sent in successive waves of reinforcements despite suffering what are said to be severe losses.

Basra came under more Iranian artillery bombardments Wednesday, killing six more people and injuring 16, raising the toll from six days of Iranian shelling there to 80 killed and 384 wounded, according to the Iraqis.

Civilians were said to be fleeing the city, 300 miles southeast of Baghdad, by the thousands. One foreign national who joined the exodus from Basra said that the road north to Baghdad was filled with people leaving by bus, car and bicycle and on foot. “They are getting out any way they can,” he said.

In the air, the war also continued with a vengeance Wednesday as another Iranian long-range missile slammed into Baghdad shortly after 12:30 p.m., “martyring a number of people and wounding others,” a military spokesman said.

Iraqi warplanes, meanwhile, bombed the Iranian shrine city of Qom for the fifth consecutive day and flew 363 other combat missions against Iranian positions and anti-aircraft missile sites, a military communique said.

Times staff writers Charles P. Wallace in Amman, Jordan, and Doyle McManus in Washington also contributed to this story.